


Herding Cats

by Misfit_McCoward



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Cats, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Tumblr Prompt, background Mila/Sara - Freeform, background Viktor/Yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misfit_McCoward/pseuds/Misfit_McCoward
Summary: Prompt from Fascinationex: "Yuri Plisetski likes cats. He talks to cats, like many cat owners do. That seems normal -- right up until they start talking back."





	Herding Cats

The cat was solid gray, with wary blue eyes and matted fur. It was pawing through a half-eaten kebab someone had dropped on sidewalk. 

 

“Hey,” Yuri said. The cat ignored him. 

 

Yuri checked that the street was empty, then squatted over the cat. 

 

“Hey,” he repeated, pulling a bag of cat food out of his jacket pocket. “Don’t you want something a little better?”

 

He reached for the cat, but it flinched away, staring up at him accusingly. It had white kebab sauce in its whiskers. 

 

_ Cute _ , Yuri thought, and reached for it again. It had mud or something worse in patched over its back and really needed a bath. 

 

The cat ran, of course. They all ran. But this wasn’t Yuri’s first feral cat, and he darted after it. 

 

The cat disappeared into a row of bushes, and Yuri dropped to his knees in front of it. The bushes marked the edge of an overgrown, abandoned lot, making the foliage thicker than the usual urban greenery Yuri had previously crawled through to get to a cat. He stuck his arm in experimentally. 

 

“Take a hint, asshole,” a voice growled.

 

Yuri snatched his hand out of the bush like it was a wasp’s nest. There was a  _ person _ in there. 

 

Yuri ogled the the lot for a while. There was… someone would have to work  _ really _ hard to fit an entire human-sized body between all the twisting stems and trunks. A lot of the plants had thorns, too. 

 

Yeah, Yuri didn’t have time for weirdos hanging out in abandoned city lots. He stood, brushed off his clothes, and continued his walk home. 

 

There was no sign of the cat, anyway. 

 

\--

 

Yuri didn’t currently have his own cat because competitive skating made him spend too much time out of the house and out of the country to care for a pet. His grandfather had a cat that was technically Yuri’s, but it didn’t live with him because his lifestyle prevented him from giving the cat the attention it deserved. 

 

Mila had a cat, though, which made absolutely no sense because she had the exact same lifestyle. 

 

She had run off to Rome for two weeks to romance her girlfriend, and had left the poor cat with Viktor, which also made absolutely no sense. 

 

“It makes perfect sense,” Viktor said, watching his fiance go through his new step routine for the fifth time that morning. “I’m retired.”

 

“From  _ competitive _ skating,” Yuri stressed. Viktor had made a huge amount of cash on an exposition skate just last week. Not to mention he was coaching Katsuki Yuuri and following him around everywhere he went like a lost puppy. “Aren’t you filming a commercial this afternoon?”

 

“It’s tomorrow,” Viktor said. “Speaking of which, Yuuri wants you over for dinner afterwards.”

 

Yuri scowled. It’s not like he didn’t want to have dinner with them but. But they didn’t have to ask so  _ nicely _ . 

 

“Tina will be there,” Viktor said. Tina was Mila’s cat. 

 

“Fine,” Yuri said, focusing on Yuuri so he could critique his stupid flawless routine to him over dinner. “You still eat at seven?”

 

“Like always,” Viktor replied. 

 

\--

 

Yuri wasn’t obsessed with cats like some sort of weirdo, but there was a bookstore with a storecat on his walk home, and if he got out before it closed, he did stick his head in to see if Pachinko was there. That wasn’t obsessed. That was  _ normal _ . 

 

“Yuri!” the store owner called when he walked in. 

 

“Miss Elisabet,” Yuri greeted. 

 

“Pachinko is–” Miss Elisabet started to say, but a voice cut her off. 

 

“ _ DIE DIE DIE _ –”

 

Yuri froze. Miss Elisabet didn’t seem bothered at all and kept talking. Yuri moved, putting himself between the weird voice and Miss Elisabet, because even if she was too friendly, she recommended good books to him and didn’t complain when he didn’t buy anything, and it would really suck if she got hurt. 

 

“– _ DIE DIE DIE _ –”

 

“Yuri?” Miss Elisabet asked. “Are you okay?”

 

“Who is that?” Yuri asked. “Can’t you hear them?”

 

“Yuri?” Miss Elisabet repeated, clearly confused, as he cautiously edged his way further into the store. 

 

“– _ DIE DIE! _ ”

 

It was probably just a random, harmless screaming man. That just happened in big cities sometimes. Still, Yuri started to dial an emergency number on his phone. 

 

Pachinko sat on top of a bookshelf, halfway through a row of beanbags Miss Elisabet had to set up all over the store so that her cat would knock them over instead of the books. Pachinko was the fluffiest white cat Yuri had ever seen, as well as a menace to his own bookstore. 

 

“DIE!” screamed the voice, and Pachinko knocked a beanbag off the shelf. It landed with a light thud at Yuri’s feet. 

 

“DIE!” it screamed again, and another beanbag went over. “DIE DIE DIE!”

 

Thud, thud, thud. 

 

“Pa.. pachinko?” Yuri asked. 

 

Pachinko looked down at Yuri and silently pushed off another beanbag.

 

“Pets,” Pachinko said very firmly. He nimbly hopped down from the shelf and started twining himself between Yuri’s legs. “Pets, pets, pets.”

 

Yuri’s phone slid out of his limp hand. That voice was definitely coming out of Pachinko. Pachinko was  _ talking _ to him. 

 

Pachinko paused to paw at Yuri’s phone on the carpet, then turned to look up at him expectantly. “What are you doing?” Pachinko asked. “You always pet. I want pets.”

 

It took a few moments to snap out of it. Miss Elisabet came around the corner, holding the sequel to some sci-fi book he’d bought a few weeks ago, to find Yuri petting her cat and looking only mildly panicked. 

 

\--

 

Yuri went to Viktor and Yuuri’s flat early, so he could have time to bug Yuuri about better stretches for ballet before Viktor came back from his yogurt commercial or whatever it was. They were off-season, so Yuri was slacking on some of his calisthenics, and Lilia was going to kill him if he wasn’t back in shape for whatever hellish training she was going to start him on. 

 

Makkachin greeted him at the door. 

 

“You’re not terrorizing Tina, are you?” Yuri asked, eyes narrowed. Makkachin just yipped at him and licked his hand. He was relieved that the dog wasn’t talking to him too. 

 

Yuuri made him help prepping for dinner, which Yuri figured was only fair. He whined about it anyway. 

 

Viktor came home loudly, dramatically slamming the door behind him and dramatically splaying himself over the couch. Both Makkachin and Yuuri dove to greet him. 

 

“Pft,” Yuri said as Makkachin leaped directly onto her owner’s stomach. Yuuri bent over to Spiderman-kiss his fiance. 

 

“Ugh,  _ loud _ ,” a voice said, and an orange and black blur shot from under the couch into the bathroom. Yuri made sure the pasta wasn’t going to bubble over and followed. 

 

Tina sat primly on the sink counter, eyeing the toilet. She had splotches of white on her stomach, and little white toes and clever yellow-green eyes. 

 

Yuri adored Tina, and Mila was lucky he hadn’t stolen her yet.

 

“How do I flush this?” Tina asked, one dainty paw reaching out and patting the tank of the toilet. “I want this power.”

 

“You have to…” Yuri started to say. Would it really be responsible to explain how to flush Viktor and Yuuri’s toilet? Could the cats even understand him back?

 

Didn’t matter. Tina was smart enough to figure it out if she watched him push the button enough times, and Viktor deserved whatever consequence came of it. 

 

\--

 

Tina flushed the toilet four times doing dinner. 

 

“Oh,” said Yuuri, “so she’s one of those cats.”

 

Viktor got up to lock her out of the bathroom. Yuri picked at his food without comment. Yuuri must have sensed something was wrong, because he said,

 

“Yuri, Viktor won’t teach me swear words.”

 

Yuri nearly dropped his fork. “ _ What _ .”

 

“There’s some in the books, of course,” Yuuri said, nodding towards the beginner Russian books piled neatly on the corner of their dining table. “But not all of them.”

 

“It’s weird when you swear,” Viktor defended, retaking his seat. Behind him, Tina slunk back under the couch. 

 

“You can’t learn Russian and not swear,” Yuri said, outraged. “How’s he going to survive on the streets without swearing?”

 

They bickered lightheartedly about that for the rest of the meal, and eventually Yuri offered to give Yuuri lessons in exchange for help reconditioning himself for ballet.

 

“But then he’ll sound like a street punk,” Viktor whined as he pulled ice cream out of the freezer. 

 

They settled on the couch to eat dessert and watch some home renovation show Yuuri and Viktor had recently become obsessed with. Tina crawled out from under the couch to curl up in Yuri’s lap. 

 

Yuri was  _ blessed _ . 

 

“I like you,” Tina purred as Yuri ran a hand down her soft fur. “You don’t smell like the dog.”

 

Yuri’s heart nearly broke. He was double blessed. He needed to take Tina home with him. 

 

When he finished his ice cream, he got up and went to the bathroom. Tina followed. 

 

“Hey,” he whispered when he got to the door. “Watch this. Just do this and I’ll take you away from the dog.”

 

He opened the door very slowly, then closed it and demonstrated how it opened again. The handle was a bar handle, and would be easy for a cat to pull. Tina watched him with sharp eyes. 

 

\--

 

Tina did indeed ruin Viktor and Yuuri’s night, and the next night, and ended up locked in her carrier and then brought to the rink and passed on to Yuri. 

 

“I know you wanted to be the one to take care of her anyway,” Viktor said dully, bags under his eyes. “May your water bill rest in peace.”

 

Yuri had recently moved into a very old flat, with an old fashioned toilet with a pull-string flush. Tina couldn’t figure it out. She spent a lot of time pacing the bathroom. 

 

“I feel as if you have betrayed me,” she said one night. “But your laundry basket is very pleasing to sleep in, so I forgive you. I have brought your weak form sustenance.”

 

She placed a dead rat at his feet. Yuri nearly screamed. 

 

“Is this why you can’t hunt?” Tina asked as he flailed around his kitchen, pulling out paper towels and washcloths and anything that might protect his hands enough that he could touch the rat without vomiting. Where had the rat even come from? Were there vermin  _ in his home? _

 

“My owner hunts the mice herself,” Tina said, yawning. 

 

Yuri glared at her. He was wearing two pairs of rubber gloves and clutching the broom and dustpan like they were weapons. He stood as far away as possible form the rat while he swept it into the dustpan. He didn’t know what to do with it now– he didn’t want it in the trash, and he doubted he could flush it down the toilet.

 

He threw it out the window and onto the street. It was someone else’s problem now. 

 

“I can hunt for myself,” Yuuri told Tina. “There’s a grocery store across the street.”

 

Tina cocked her head at him. It was unclear if she understood. 

 

\--

 

Yuri figured he had this power for a reason, so he did the only reasonable thing he could think of and patrolled the city for lost cats. It was a big city, and there were a lot of irresponsible owners, and on his first self-assigned mission he brought back three cats. 

 

“Now,” he said, sitting down on his floor in front of them. “Tell me where you belong, and I’ll take you home.”

 

The cats immediately wandered away from him. 

 

“I bet I could fit in here,” one cat said, then knocked over his trash bin and crawled inside. 

 

“What’s in here?” another cat asked, swiping her paw under the broom closet door. “I want to go in here.” She jumped for the handle. 

 

“Oh, you’ll like him,” Tina was telling the third cat. “He gives good pets, and there are plenty of rats.”

 

“ _ Plenty? _ ” Yuri repeated, momentarily distracted. 

 

“My owner has a snake,” one of the cats said, “it gets mice  _ and _ a heater.”

 

They all started yowling about that, and that was the only fact about the owners Yuri got out of them. 

 

\--

 

“This is weird,” Mila said when she came to pick up Tina. 

 

Yuuri had six cats now, in addition to Tina. He’d managed to get one of the original three back to its owner, but along the way had replaced it with another lost cat. Two more were feral cats he couldn’t leave alone because they had complained about being too cold and too hungry, respectively. He didn’t know where the sixth one had come from. It had just appeared. 

 

“Shut up,” Yuri growled. 

 

“Does your landlord know?” Mila asked. 

 

“Shut  _ up _ ,” Yuri repeated. Of course his landlord didn’t know. It was a shame, too, because he desperately wanted to grill the landlord about wherever all these rats were coming from. 

 

“What are you going to do when the skating season starts?” Mila asked.

 

“Shut. Up.” Yuri slammed the door in her face. Mila was in no position to judge weird pet ownership decisions. 

 

“I’ll leave your souvenir by the door,” Mila called cheerfully from the otherside. “Sara says hi, by the way.”

 

Yuri ignored her. One of the cats was purring and rubbing itself against his leg, and he bent to pet it. He was blessed. 

 

There was another dead rat he had to deal with, and every piece of clothing he owned was covered in fur, but he was blessed. 

 

“I figured out the toilet flush!” one of the cats called, and all five of the other cats made a beeline for the bathroom.

 

_ Blessed _ , dammit. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually quite allergic to cats and haven't interacted with them a lot, so I hope that's not too obvious lmao. Tina the cat is based on my friend's (hvadfucken on tumblr) cat Tina, a calitortie with "abs of steel." 
> 
> Questions, comments, complaints? Please leave a comment. :)


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